Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "The Drydock - Episode 199" video.

And then when he captured a German gunboat, he named it HMS Fifi. Apparently this had been the suggestion of a Belgian officer's wife, who recognized the theme behind Mimi and Toutou. According to Spicer-Simson, Fifi meant "tweet-tweet".
7
Without the Harrier proving its combat effectiveness in the Falklands, I wonder whether the F-35B would be even exist. There's a good chance the war doesn't even happen if a pair of Maltas are in the fleet, since they so dramatically increase the Royal Navy's fighting power that the Argentine junta might not have dared to try. But if they did, it would've been Royal Navy Phantoms that swept the skies of the Argentine Air Force. The Sea Harrier likely wouldn't exist, and there would've been little need to bring RAF Harrier GR.1s to conduct air strikes when the Phantoms and Buccaneers could do the job just fine. With Harriers being seen as simply CAS aircraft for the Marines rather than anybody thinking of them as a fighter, I can see the idea being that the Harrier's replacement doesn't need to be a supersonic multi-role jet and thus being separate from the JSF program.
4
Possibly. Though if the F-4K had been replaced with the F/A-18, it's possible that Britain still wouldn't have been interested in a Sea Typhoon and been of the thinking that the Royal Navy using American fighters is just how it's done. In which case you'd see the Royal Navy adopting the Super Hornet.
3
I like the idea of Britain saving the Super Crusader program.
2
@kemarisite That and, as with many other cases of fuck-ups being overlooked, relieving Halsey of command would've required telling the public that he fucked up, which was seen as bad for morale.
2
@WALTERBROADDUS That's the point, because Halsey was so prominent, they thought it would be bad for morale to admit he fucked up.
2
My thought is that since Strasbourg managed 8x 13" guns and 11" belt on 28k tons, a 29k ton British BB using quad turrets should be able to achieve 8x 14" and at least 12" belt. Since 28 knots was seen as adequate by the Royal Navy, you'd be able to get away with a somewhat shorter hull with less machinery space than the 30 knot Strasbourg. This leaves both less tonnage devoted to the hull itself and a slightly shorter citadel that the belt needs to cover. A 13" belt for the magazines and 12" for the machinery (in keeping with the Royal Navy design philosophy of the time that the magazines needed heavier armor) seems like it ought to be doable. Even better if the design incorporated angled armor. This was excluded from the KGV design apparently so that the belt could be externally mounted and thus more easily repaired.
2
With regard to 29,000-ish ton battleships...did any of those British design studies consider making what amounts to a larger Dunkerque with a pair of 14" quad turrets? That seems like by far the best option to create a useful battleship on such limited tonnage. The up-armored Strasbourg was a 30 knot battleship with 11" belt armor and 8x 13" guns on 28,000 tons. The British 14" quad turret is only about 110 tons heavier than the the French 13" quad. While getting a 14-15" belt like the actual KGVs probably isn't happening on 29,000 tons, the fact that Britain considered 28 knots an acceptable speed (thus not needing quite as much length or as much machinery space as the Dunkerques) suggests to me that 12-13" belt would've been doable in the 29,000 ton range. A small battleship with 8x 14" guns, 12-13" belt, and 28 knots seems like it still would've been enough to be useful. You've only got 2 fewer guns than the real-life KGVs, and 2" thinner armor. Such a ship doesn't seem like it would've been insane to send alongside Hood to fight Bismarck. She'd have better armor than Hood, after all. And fitting sufficient secondary battery on the smaller hull could be handled by the expedient of using the lighter 4.5" turrets...which were better AA guns anyway. The biggest downsides to a ship like this are more limited space to put light AA mounts, and the problems with the British 14" quad turret. The latter of which applied equally to the 35,000 ton KGVs.
1
That said, I can see the possibility of Britain still not wanting to bother with a naval variant of the Typhoon. When development began, Britain would've likely replaced both the Matlas' Phantoms and Buccaneers with Hornets only a decade earlier. As such, Parliament would likely conclude "we can stick with these for another decade and thus not have to spend on new naval fighters yet". And thus, in early 2000s when it comes time to replace the Hornets, we might see Britain buying Super Hornets. Or Rafales, ironically.
1
King George V and Prince of Wales were the only KGVs completed as of May 1941. Perhaps of one of those "small BB" designs had been used instead, Duke of York might've been completed a little bit faster and thus made it into service in time to be sent Denmark Strait. Let's say DoY is completed 3 months faster than in reality due to being a smaller hull. That would mean you're throwing her into battle less than a week after she's commissioned.
1